Mon 15 Apr 2013
Allie went to Gong-gong (grandpa) and Po-po (grandma) ‘s house on Sunday morning for a visit. My mom is kinda paranoid about Allie putting things in her mouth, which Allie doesn’t much do anymore, but my mom is still heavily restrictive. Allie has some fun with that, the little goofy goof.
Fri 12 Apr 2013
When we got home after work yesterday, Jayne told us that Allie tried to vault out of her crib after her nap. :/ Allie customarily gets 15 minutes post-nap to hang out in her crib and do her own thing, “own thing” meaning, primarily, to poop. She’d stay contentedly in there much longer, but we don’t want her to sit in her own poop longer than that. In was in these 15 minutes that Jayne looked over at the babycam monitor and saw that Allie’s upper body was on the wide front rail of the crib with one leg already over. She needed only to lean a little more and she’d be on the floor. Jayne freaked out and sprinted for Allie’s room, screaming “ALLIE!” on the way to stop Allie. She said when she burst in there, Allie was so startled and felt so reprimanded that she (Allie) was heaving and sobbing. Jayne said it took awhile for her own heart rate to go back to normal. Now that’s a caring nanny. 🙂
Jayne thought Allie may have gotten an extra height boost from stepping on the crib bumpers that line the perimeter of Allie’s crib. I’ve seen Allie step on them before but didn’t think it’d occurred to her to use it as a step-stool. I was hoping this was an isolated incident so that we could leave the bumpers on a bit longer, since Allie sometimes wedges her head in the soft corner and/or hangs a foot out between the crib slats in her sleep.
But she’d already used the front part of the crib rail like a ballerina leg-stretching bar recently (which she did while I was in there so I just pushed her foot off), and the entire evening with us, she was behaving like a little monkey, climbing onto the La-Z-Boy, climbing onto the back rest of the La-Z-Boy to look out the window behind it, climbing in and out of her tub. When Mr. W said we need to take the bumpers off, I didn’t protest. Luckily, Allie nursed herself to sleep last night and stayed asleep (for the 4th night in a row) when transferred to her crib, so she didn’t notice that the bumpers were gone. Her crib looks so roomy and bare to me now.
If Allie is still able to get herself over the rail, we’re going to have to change the rail to make her bed a toddler bed, with lower front rails and an opening about halfway in, so that she doesn’t hurt herself dropping from the top of the crib rail to the floor when she’s in there alone. I have no clue how to get her to stay in bed during her long latency periods if she has direct access out, so I’m hoping this stage stays away a little (a lot) longer. She can and does open her bedroom door unassisted, but that’s less of an issue to me than her pulling out all her dresser drawers and hurting herself while we sleep.
Last night, just in case, I pulled the little plastic footstool away from the side of her crib and more toward the center of the room. Just in cause she’s still able to vault over the crib rails and fall on the stool. She did fine on Night 1 of the debumperized bed, staying asleep until Mr. W woke her up to get ready this morning, so she probably never noticed the bumpers were gone. Hopefully the nap goes well today.
Wed 10 Apr 2013
Just this past weekend, Mr. W was saying that Allie’s “behind” in her developmental abilities because she doesn’t know her colors, yet. He blames that on the fact that we see her approximately half an hour in the mornings before work, and an hour and a half in the evenings after work. “See, we need to retire so we can spend more time with her and teach her things,” he declared in his never-ending string of arguments for getting me to quit my job.
He brought this up to Allie’s nanny Jayne on Monday, and Jayne said, “She’s gotta know her colors — we go over them all the time. She’s just not saying them.”
And then Tuesday morning, as Allie and I cuddled up in the La-Z-Boy recliner in her room about to nurse, I pointed at the colorful elephants on her fleece pajamas and said, “Elephants!” She looked down at her pajamas. I pointed at the elephants floating on the mobile in her room and said again, “Elephants!”
Allie pointed at a pink elephant on the leg of her PJs. “Mmm?” she asked me.
“Pink elephant,” I said. She pointed at another elephant on her knee. “Green elephant,” I said.
Then she pointed at a blue elephant on her thigh. “Boo?”
“That’s right, that’s blue!” I said, wondering if it were a coincidence.
She pointed at other elephants on her PJs, asking with her inquisitive “Mmm?” and I in turn named each of their colors. Then she returned to the blue elephant, pointed, and said, “Boo?” It’s not a coincidence! Encouraged by my enthusiasm, she then placed a tiny fingertip on the blue elephant’s eye. “Eye?” I was very happy yesterday morning.
This evening, when we returned home after work, Jayne excitedly told us that Allie had pointed to a pair of socks Jayne had been holding in her hand and said, “Yellow.” I’ve never heard her say “yellow” so I don’t know how she pronounces it. Jayne said she’d looked down at the socks and only then realized she was holding yellow socks, so it was completely unprompted.
In your face, dada!
Speaking of face, Allie in the past couple of weeks has enjoyed pointing out facial features to us. “Eye?” she’d say, poking herself in the eye. Then she’d point to my eye.
“Mama’s eye,” I’d tell her.
“Mama?” she’d confirm, poking me in the eye. And then she’d move on. “No?” she’d say, pointing at her nose. Then she’d point to my nose. Then she’d stick her finger in her mouth and say, “Teeth!” “Ear” comes out more like “Eee.” Eyebrow to her is just “bwow.” Then she’d jab at her neck and say, “Nock nock nock!” After that she’ll jab my neck and say the same thing. She also goes through this with her stuffed animals. She points out her bear’s eyes, nose, ears.
Just a couple of days ago, I finally realized that the “mock nee” she says while in her room, as she’d said for almost a couple of months now, refers to her singing dancing sock monkey that was a gift from Auntie Maggie, sitting on her dresser. She says it like it’s two different words, but always says it together, so I don’t know why I didn’t think to put “mock nee” together for “monkey” before now. We also realized last week that the “me me” she’s been saying for weeks didn’t mean herself; she means Minnie Mouse. Maybe she’s been saying her colors all along and we just didn’t understand her. Maybe she’s been saying tons of other words that we still haven’t understood, yet. Maybe she’s been reciting Hamlet‘s “To be or not to be” soliloquy for weeks when we thought she was just humming and babbling to herself.
Okay, that’s a little unrealistic. More likely, she says “blue” and “yellow” because she’s aspiring to be a Bruin, like her mama.
What color’s the egg, Allie?
Mon 8 Apr 2013
Here are some Easter photos and videos, a week late. =P
Mr. W and I went grocery shopping on Saturday, the day before Easter, and he talked about wanting to buy pre-boiled, pre-dyed eggs. There’s no such thing, I’d said. Half the fun/point of Easter egg hunts is egg creation, isn’t it? At least, that’s what my inexperienced little Asian perspective of a mostly-Western tradition tells me. I’d always wanted to dye/make Easter eggs as a kid, and since we’re Chinese in a (mostly) culturally Chinese immigrant household growing up, I couldn’t explain to my parents why I’d want to make a mess like that with perfectly good food. When I moved out after graduating college, I saw a P.A.A.S. egg-dying kit at the grocery store and bought it, wanting to add the missing piece back into my childhood, but never got around to even opening the package. I may have read the instructions in the back and decided it was too much trouble for just myself. Mr. W said that now that we have a baby, we need to give her these quintessential childhood experiences so I would have to get my virgin feet wet in egg dye. I sort of rolled my eyes about the hassle (since she’s still too young to really appreciate or participate in egg dying), but a small part of me was interested, too. Well, guess what we saw in the grocery store.
Gosh darn it, but he was right. We get to be lazy parents for another year. We tell ourselves NEXT year, we’ll really do it “right” because she would be old enough to enjoy and “help.”
Allie’s paternal grandparents had come to visit a couple of weekends ago and brought her her first Easter basket (I didn’t know about Easter baskets full of goodies being a “thing” until, like, last year, either. Apparently these Western kids get goodies, gifts and junk food in as many occasions as excited parents can muster up, often well into the kids’ adulthood. I wasn’t spoiled like that. I’m a little envious.). In it were a pair of small bouncy chick and bouncy bunny wind-up toys, hairbands/bows for her head, and this gorgeous little Easter dress that we put her in. Her nanny left a surprise Easter basket for her, as well, full of sand toys and a book, and we used her nanny’s felt Easter bag for her egg hunt. Shoes and basket from her nanny, dress from her paternal grandparents, hat from me ($1 at Target), and here’s her ensemble:
While my parents, her gong-gong and po-po looked on, Allie went to the backyard where Mr. W had randomly placed the eggs on the lawn, and Allie had her first Easter egg hunt. (We knew we didn’t want to take her to a public one just yet; I’d heard too many stories about parents getting into fights with other parents over egg hunts that somehow became a aggressive contact sports with audience participation.)
Allie enjoyed herself so much, and kept saying “More? More?” that her dada simply took the eggs out of her basket and tossed them back on the lawn in places where she had her back turned. It was, like, perpetual eggstravaganza.
My dad, her gong-gong, was super-impressed at how she knew to pick up the eggs and place them in her basket. “How she know to do that?” I said that based on this 20-second video my mom shot, it was because they were all shouting directions at her.
Sat 6 Apr 2013
I’m kind of known to my friends as the girl who never pays full price for big-ticket items. Cars, cruises, hotels, jewelry. I’m not going cheap imitation — what I get is the same as what others get; I just don’t pay nearly as much. Some of it is luck in timing (thank you, Universe!), another part is knowing where to look and how to purchase. In the jewelry department, I’ve just received Item #2 of my Top 2 Best Purchases, Ever. You can see both #1 and #2 in this photo:
Here’s how I did it:
Item #1: The diamond chevron wedding band.
This is, of course, #1 in chronology, but it’s up in the air whether it’s better than #2. Mr. W had spent a small fortune on the engagement ring (also pictured), so I was determined not to create another giant expense on the wedding band. It was hard finding a band that worked well up against a 3-sided engagement ring anyway, so I only perused here and there, thinking if I didn’t see anything I liked, I’d just have the elaborate engagement ring double as a wedding band. A couple of friends with uniquely-shaped engagement rings had done just that.
On a drive to Vegas to visit Mr. W’s parents, we decided to make a stop at an outlet mall to stretch our legs and have lunch. We wandered by Ultra Diamonds, a retail chain jewelry store that I’m fairly familiar with, just to browse. This white gold and diamond chevron ring was deeply discounted on clearance. The price was still well into the hundreds, but I asked to see it anyway, having explained the hard-to-fit problem to the store clerk. I put the engagement ring and diamond band together, and the two matched up like they were meant to be a set. The dip in the band was at the exact right place, had the exact right width, and the little bead-set round diamonds were even of a similar color, size, shape, and setting as the diamonds on the sides of my ring (you can’t see the sides of the engagement ring in this photo, but you can see it here.).
The store clerk (I think he was the manager at that branch) told me they were doing a promotion where if we sign up to be on their emailing list, we would receive a coupon code for $50 off any purchase. He suggested Mr. W sign up, too, so that we would get $100 in discounts. I asked if this store stacked discounts, and he said they did. So we put the ring on hold, signed up, and left for Vegas in order to give the coupons time to be sent. Meanwhile, I had another reason for waiting. Ultra Diamonds was a “platinum partner” of my primary credit card, which means that my cashback bonus from the card can be redeemed for a giftcard to this retailer for double its original value. I used $100 of my cashback bonus for a giftcard to Ultra Diamonds, which gave me a $200 e-giftcard. With the other $100 in the email promo coupon, we stopped by the outlet again on our drive home from Vegas at the end of our visit and not only did I get my diamond chevron band for free, but they gave me something like $7 in change back. Basically, it was like, “Here, take our jewelry, and some extra cash, too.” Better than free.
Item #2: The Solar Seiko watch.
On Sunday, my ESQ watch started doing the tick-once-every-few-seconds thing, indicating it was running out of battery. The last watch battery I’d purchased less than 2 years ago had cost a little more because it had a 3-year warranty. The problem was that I couldn’t remember what store I’d purchased the battery from, and I couldn’t find the receipt, so I wouldn’t be able to get a free battery replacement. I could just get the battery replaced at another place, but with Murphy’s Law I’d probably find the receipt right after I did that, so I would’ve voided the warranty for nothing. I started browsing for new watches online. The crystal of that ESQ watch has a big deep scratch on it, anyway. I may be in the market for another watch.
In my surprisingly difficult hunt for a simple, clean-looking ladies’ watch in silvertone (i.e., steel with no yellow gold) with a date function, I discovered Seiko’s “Solar” line. The Solar watches run on any light source, even fluorescent. The light penetrates the watch’s face and is converted to energy for a self-recharging battery that runs the watch, and it does that so efficiently that a fully charged watch will run for 6-12 months (depending on model) without another encounter with a light source. If the watch happens to die from lack of charge because, say, you left it in a closed drawer for a few years, it needs only to be exposed to sunlight, incandescent light, or fluorescent light for minutes before it jumps to life again. 1-2 minutes in sunlight equals an hour of charge if the watch needs charging; 3 hours in sunlight will fully charge the watch. My Kindle won’t even finish charging in 3 hours. Anyway, it’s very green (as in environmentally friendly) and the never-needing-a-battery-change perk appealed to me. I think houses should be powered by Seiko solar cells. As a huge bonus, I found the line to have attractive ladies’ watches with calendar dates! The only downer is that the watches with calendars are priced between $200 and $500. Kind of hard to justify spending hundreds on a new watch when a battery replacement on my current watch with another 3-year warranty costs under $25.
I went to bed to sleep on it after looking into this watch line on Monday night. Tuesday, the image of a beautiful Seiko Solar watch was “suggested” to me thanks to sophisticated web search engines remembering what I’d looked for previously. This watch had a calendar but was way dressier than my usual taste in everyday-wear watches. It also cost $425, thanks to the 24 diamonds around its bezel. I thought I’d check out my go-to discount watch site, BlueDial, for this model anyway, just for kicks. And saw that this model was on sale for $163. Wow! I’d prefer to keep it under $120, but $163 wouldn’t break me. I decided to “think about it,” and then something else caught my eye. One of the check-out options was to pay through Amazon. I do tons of shopping on Amazon and had linked two credit cards’ cashback rewards to Amazon so that my purchases there would be made strictly from cashback bonuses, i.e., free for me. If I could pay for this watch through Amazon, that must mean that BlueDial is an affiliated seller of Amazon’s, which means I could buy through Amazon and apply my cashback toward its purchase. I logged into Amazon and did a search for this watch. There it was, only 1 left through BlueDial. I threw my remaining cashback bonus at this purchase, and ended up paying…$21 and some change out-of-pocket for a $425 watch. Score!
As a bonus, this watch arrived in 2 days and I got it on Thursday. I brought it with me to work on Friday to show my favorite Family Law judge, who is a collector of high-end watches. I’d told him the story of this watch on Thursday and he’d asked me to bring the watch in after I received it, so I did. He was very impressed (although this watch is small beans compared to the $4000 Omega Speedmaster Moon Watch he’s currently on the prowl for), and said that this watch was a better deal than my better-than-free wedding band. He recommended a trustworthy local jeweler/watch repair shop to me and Mr. W and I went there at lunch to get 4 links removed from my new watch so that I could wear it. (While I was there, I also had the jeweler re-rhodium-plate my engagement ring, and they inspected and cleaned both rings for free.) The watch face is bigger than any other watch I’d owned, but that’s the current style. And my left hand is now WAY more blinged out than I’d ever thought it would be. Less than the price of a battery change.
The jeweler, a really nice guy named Raul, was very impressed with my jewelry. The engagement ring caught his eye right away when I came in, and when Mr. W told him about the heart facet in the diamond, he immediately took out his jeweler’s loupe and checked it out. He was delighted, saying he’d never seen anything like that before. Doing the inspection of the band, he noted that the diamonds are very good, as well as consistent in shape, color and quality. I told him the story of the acquisition of #1 and he was wide-eyed and more impressed. When Mr. W told him how I got an amazing deal on the watch (which is a line the shop carries, altho they didn’t have that specific model and he was very admiring of it), he guessed, “What did you pay? Let me guess, $300?” When I told him the out-of-pocket amount I paid of $21, he froze in amazement and said, “How did you do THAT? I couldn’t even do that when I liquidated!” referring to when he was manager of a top-of-the-line fine jewelry chain that has since ceased to exist after a court-ordered liquidation. Hee hee!
BTW, I’d found the watch battery receipt and had gotten my other watch’s battery replaced for free. Now I have 2 working watches, which is good, because I probably don’t want to wear my diamond watch all the time for casual or athletic encounters, even tho it’s waterproof up to 100 meters.
Thu 4 Apr 2013
One of the most fun times I’d had in recent memory happened this past Monday. It was a court holiday (thank you, Cesar Chavez), so Mr. W thought he’d take advantage by taking the day off and addressing some car issues he’s had. Nothing big, turned out he had a nail in a tire which the dealership charged $33 to patch (ouch). He could’ve gotten it done for free at America’s Tire, where I go, but he already had his car there for an oil change so he just paid the extra. That’s not the fun part, in case you’re wondering what the heck is wrong with me.
When Mr. W got the call that his car was ready for pick-up, we put Allie in my car’s carseat (forward-facing for the first time, but we had to because we had to move to the next carseat size up and it didn’t fit properly backward facing. Allie is past the legal height and weight requirements for mandatory backward-facing, altho the recommendation is back-facing until age 2. She’s still backward-facing in Mr. W’s car, which we use to transport her 99.9% of the time), I drove, Mr. W climbed in the front passenger seat. I popped in a Pussycat Dolls CD, and I could see in the rear-view mirror and when I’d glance over my shoulder for a lane change that Allie was bopping along to the music, but whenever I or Mr. W would turn and look at her, she’d stop and just solemnly look back at us, first at one, blink, then eyeballs roll to the other parent, blink, eyeballs roll back to the first parent. Mr. W commented she looked like she was watching a very serious ping pong ball match.
Soon we dropped Mr. W off, and it was just Allie and me in my car driving home. The music came back again, and THIS time, she wiggle-wiggled to the music, bobbed her head, threw her hands in the air to the beat, smiled and laughed. I car-danced with her to PCD’s “Wait a Minute” and we both laughed and watched each other (me being careful to only turn around during red lights, of course). I guess she was just self-conscious when dada was in the car with her. She has been Team Mommy for awhile now. It made for a great drive home.
Tue 2 Apr 2013
The stepkidlet took this photo of Allie on Easter Day (Sunday).
Simple photo, not much to the composition. Allie’s just standing and smiling in the living room holding her Easter basket, ready to go in the backyard for her first egg hunt. But here’s what it took to GET that shot!
